The MSc Regional & Urban Planning Studies is a strongly focused and internationally based planning programme that has a long tradition in training both people seeking careers in urban and regional planning policy and mid-career professionals. Founded in 1966 by the departments of Economics, Geography and Government, the programme (now housed solely in the department of Geography & Environment) continues a strong interdisciplinary focus challenging students to understand cities and regions from an economic, social and environmental perspective. The MSc aims to provide a common understanding of the various influences affecting the planning process, and to teach a set of research skills that will help planners in practice. These skills include urban and regional economic analysis, the evaluation of environmental and regional policies and the study of institutional and political factors that impact city and regional development. These perspectives will be applied to London and to a wide range of countries and cities through lectures and seminar debate.

Students join the course from many countries and from many different backgrounds in the social sciences and the design, planning and property professions. Most graduates go on to work in city, regional or environmental planning, particularly on the research and consultancy side of practice.

A strong sense of identity is generated in the student body, and the alumni keep in regular contact with each other through an annual newsletter. A number of walks are conducted early in the first term to help students orient to London and a fieldtrip is held during the Easter vacation, the destination is chosen by the students. This is held in various British regions or cities or on continental Europe. Recent student cohorts have chosen Istanbul, Berlin, Moscow, Dublin and Amsterdam. The students also run a Planning Society, which organises speakers, shorter trips and social events.

During the second half of the twentieth century the towns and cities of Britain were transformed more extensively than at any period since the industrial revolution. Millions of people were moved from the centre of cities to new urban settlements in what Alison Ravetz called ‘the greatest internal migration in British history’; whole manufacturing industries and their associated communities and cultures, which had dominated much of urban Britain north of the Trent for two centuries, were swept away in a matter of decades; and the steady influx of peoples from the old empire and Europe created new community formations and ultimately a multicultural Britain which was also overwhelmingly urban. Britain’s towns and cities today are barely recognisable from the drab and damaged places that emerged from the Second World War.Continue reading CONF, CfP “The Transformation of Urban Britain since 1945”. University of Leicester, UK. 9./10.7.2013. Deadline: 1.2.2013

Scarcity is often considered as a fundamental condition of human societies. On the one hand, the state of not having enough has been at the bottom of a variety of strategies and techniques to overcome it; on the other, it has served as an explanatory argument for social order, for distribution or for conflict.

ACUMEN: Assembly for Comparative Urbanisation and the Material Environment

Digital methodologies for social research on processes of urban landscape development

12th and 13th of December 2012, Leeds, UK

ACUMEN will be hosted by the Centre for Spatial Analysis and Policy (CSAP), School of Geography, University of Leeds. It is funded by Digital Social Research Community Activities Funding Scheme of the NSDeSS, with the support of TALISMAN: Geospatial Data Analysis and Simulation.

The urban sensescape is an underdeveloped aspect of Urban History. This conference explores the ways in which people have developed relationships with, and to, the urban environment from early modern times to the present.
Recently, the ’emotive turn’ has sought to address the neglected yet important subjects of touch and smell in the city that Joseph Rykwert identified in his book _The Seduction of Place: The History and Future of Cities_[Ed. Vintage Press, 2002]. This conference seeks, therefore, to engage with the emotive turn to explore how people have, since the early modern times, explored and experienced the city through their senses. It also seeks to identify the types of strategies that condition the development of an urban sensescape.Continue reading CONF, CfP Sensing the City: Experience, Emotion and Exploration, c.1600-2013. York, UK. 4.-5.4.2013. Deadline: 28.9.2012

The Anglo-Danish Society invites applications from research students of British or Danish nationality for scholarships facilitating periods of research in the UK or Denmark. ADS particularly encourages applications from UK students wishing to conduct research in Denmark.
For the academic year 2012-13, there are two targeted scholarships: The Ove Arup Foundation award of £2000, for research students working on a subject relevant to the Built Environment, and a one-off special award of £2000 for students working on Design (broadly conceived), thanks to the generous legacy of the late Torben Skjalm Petersen.
More information on the scholarships and the application process can be found at:
http://www.anglo-danishsociety.org.uk/artman/publish/scholarships.shtml. Closing date for the return of completed applications is 1st March 2012.

Emerging Boundaries of Praxis
9th AHRA Research Student Conference. 19-20 May 2012. Aberdeen
Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Robert Gordon University
With IDEAS Research Institute; Environment for People

Call for papers
New Urban Conditions are transforming the way we perceive urban issues and recognize new research strands. Shifting socio-economic and political conditions and the urban production and consumption patterns stipulate new-fangled ideologies in the production of Built Environment (architecture; landscape; public realm; planning schemes and so on) and hence the methods and ideologies that engross in producing these built environments warrant a renewed thinking process. Urban managers (architects and allied professionals) largely require renaissance in thinking process for preparing themselves to countenance the improbability of the new and emerging urban conditions.
9th AHRA Conference is expected to give delegates (architects, planners, urban designers, construction sector professionals, and all allied professionals), especially the research students, a platform to share and understand the emerging fundamentals of research methods; urban issues and findings; and overall a conduit for student delegates to establish collaborations and stir polemical debates in order to allow them to re-position themselves to look at the cities and architecture differently.
Papers are sought from the researchers in the field of built environment, which deals with any issues on focusing on built environment. Selected peer reviewed papers (post-conference), will be published in a special issue of Global Built Environment Review (http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/gber/). Delegates receive “Continuing Professional Development” (CPD) certification for attendance.

Proposal for papers should be sent as 200 words abstract with title, name, affiliation and keywords to AHRA9@rgu.ac.uk by 31 January 2012.
Call for Papers: 31 January 2012
Acceptance of Papers: 17 February, 2012
Full Papers: 20 April, 2012
Conference: 19 May, Saturday, 2012.